iron processinguse of a smelting process to turn the ore into a form from which products can be fashioned. Included in this article also is a discussion of the mining of iron and of its preparation for smelting.

Iron (Fe) is a relatively dense metal with a silvery white appearance and distinctive magnetic properties. It constitutes 5 percent by weight of the Earth’s crust, and it is the fourth most abundant element after oxygen, silicon, and aluminum. It melts at a temperature of 1,538° C (2,800° F).

Iron is allotropic—that is, it exists in different forms. Its crystal structure is either body-centred cubic (bcc) or face-centred cubic (fcc), depending on the temperature. In both crystallographic modifications, the basic configuration is a cube with iron atoms located at the corners. There is an extra atom in the centre of each cube in the bcc modification and in the centre of each face in the fcc. At room temperature, pure iron has a bcc structure referred to as alpha-ferrite; this persists until the temperature is raised to 912° C (1,674° F), when it transforms into an fcc arrangement known as austenite. With further heating, austenite remains until the temperature reaches 1,394° C (2,541° F), at which point the bcc structure reappears. This form of iron, called delta-ferrite, remains until the melting point is reached.

The pure metal is malleable and can be easily shaped by hammering, but apart from specialized electrical applications it is rarely used without adding other elements to improve its properties. Mostly it appears in iron-carbon alloys such as steels, which contain between 0.003 and about 2 percent carbon (the majority lying in the range of 0.01 to 1.2 percent), and cast irons with 2 to 4 percent carbon. At the carbon contents typical of steels, iron carbide (Fe3C), also known as cementite, is formed; this leads to the formation of pearlite, which in a microscope can be seen to consist of alternate laths of alpha-ferrite and cementite. Cementite is harder and stronger than ferrite but is much less malleable, so that vastly differing mechanical properties are obtained by varying the amount of carbon. At the higher carbon contents typical of cast irons, carbon may separate out as either cementite or graphite, depending on the manufacturing conditions. Again, a wide range of properties is obtained. This versatility of iron-carbon alloys leads to their widespread use in engineering and explains why iron is by far the most important of all the industrial metals.

History

There is evidence that meteorites were used as a source of iron before 3000 BC, but extraction of the metal from ores dates from about 2000 BC. Production seems to have started in the copper-producing regions of Anatolia and Persia, where the use of iron compounds as fluxes to assist in melting may have accidentally caused metallic iron to accumulate on the bottoms of copper smelting furnaces. When iron making was properly established, two types of furnace came into use. Bowl furnaces were constructed by digging a small hole in the ground and arranging for air from a bellows to be introduced through a pipe or tuyere. Stone-built shaft furnaces, on the other hand, relied on natural draft, although they too sometimes used tuyeres. In both cases, smelting involved creating a bed of red-hot charcoal to which iron ore mixed with more charcoal was added. Chemical reduction of the ore then occurred, but, since primitive furnaces were incapable of reaching temperatures higher than 1,150° C (2,100° F), the normal product was a solid lump of metal known as a bloom. This may have weighed up to 5 kilograms (11 pounds) and consisted of almost pure iron with some entrapped slag and pieces of charcoal. The manufacture of iron artifacts then required a shaping operation, which involved heating blooms in a fire and hammering the red-hot metal to produce the desired objects. Iron made in this way is known as wrought iron. Sometimes too much charcoal seems to have been used, and iron-carbon alloys, which have lower melting points and can be cast into simple shapes, were made unintentionally. The applications of this cast iron were limited because of its brittleness, and in the early Iron Age only the Chinese seem to have exploited it. Elsewhere, wrought iron was the preferred material.

Although the Romans built furnaces with a pit into which slag could be run off, little change in iron-making methods occurred until medieval times. By the 15th century, many bloomeries used low shaft furnaces with water power to drive the bellows, and the bloom, which might weigh over 100 kilograms, was extracted through the top of the shaft. The final version of this kind of bloomery hearth was the Catalan forge (see figure), which survived in Spain until the 19th century. Another design, the high bloomery furnace, had a taller shaft and evolved into the 3-metre- (10-foot-) high Stückofen, which produced blooms so large they had to be removed through a front opening in the furnace.

The blast furnace appeared in Europe in the 15th century when it was realized that cast iron could be used to make one-piece guns with good pressure-retaining properties, but whether its introduction was due to Chinese influence or was an independent development is unknown. At first, the differences between a blast furnace and a Stückofen were slight. Both had square cross sections, and the main changes required for blast-furnace operation were an increase in the ratio of charcoal to ore in the charge and a taphole for the removal of liquid iron. The product of the blast furnace became known as pig iron from the method of casting, which involved running the liquid into a main channel connected at right angles to a number of shorter channels. The whole arrangement resembled a sow suckling her litter, and so the lengths of solid iron from the shorter channels were known as pigs.

Despite the military demand for cast iron, most civil applications required malleable iron, which until then had been made directly in a bloomery. The arrival of blast furnaces, however, opened up an alternative manufacturing route; this involved converting cast iron to wrought iron by a process known as fining. Pieces of cast iron were placed on a finery hearth, on which charcoal was being burned with a plentiful supply of air, so that carbon in the iron was removed by oxidation, leaving semisolid malleable iron behind. From the 15th century on, this two-stage process gradually replaced direct iron making, which nevertheless survived into the 19th century.

By the middle of the 16th century, blast furnaces were being operated more or less continuously in southeastern England. Increased iron production led to a scarcity of wood for charcoal and to its subsequent replacement by coal in the form of coke—a discovery that is usually credited to Abraham Darby in 1709. Because the higher strength of coke enabled it to support a bigger charge, much larger furnaces became possible, and weekly outputs of 5 to 10 tons of pig iron were achieved.

Next, the advent of the steam engine to drive blowing cylinders meant that the blast furnace could be provided with more air. This created the potential problem that pig iron production would far exceed the capacity of the finery process. Accelerating the conversion of pig iron to malleable iron was attempted by a number of inventors, but the most successful was the Englishman Henry Cort, who patented his puddling furnace in 1784. Cort used a coal-fired reverberatory furnace to melt a charge of pig iron to which iron oxide was added to make a slag. Agitating the resultant “puddle” of metal caused carbon to be removed by oxidation (together with silicon, phosphorus, and manganese). As a result, the melting point of the metal rose so that it became semisolid, although the slag remained quite fluid. The metal was then formed into balls and freed from as much slag as possible before being removed from the furnace and squeezed in a hammer. For a short time, puddling furnaces were able to provide enough iron to meet the demands for machinery, but once again blast-furnace capacity raced ahead as a result of the Scotsman James Beaumont Nielsen’s invention in 1828 of the hot-blast stove for preheating blast air and the realization that a round furnace performed better than a square one.

The eventual decline in the use of wrought iron was brought about by a series of inventions that allowed furnaces to operate at temperatures high enough to melt iron. It was then possible to produce steel, which is a superior material. First, in 1856, Henry Bessemer patented his converter process for blowing air through molten pig iron, and in 1861 William Siemens took out a patent for his regenerative open-hearth furnace. In 1879 Sidney Gilchrist Thomas and Percy Gilchrist adapted the Bessemer converter for use with phosphoric pig iron; as a result, the basic Bessemer, or Thomas, process was widely adopted on the continent of Europe, where high-phosphorus iron ores were abundant. For about 100 years, the open-hearth and Bessemer-based processes were jointly responsible for most of the steel that was made, before they were replaced by the basic oxygen and electric-arc furnaces.

Apart from the injection of part of the fuel through tuyeres, the blast furnace has employed the same operating principles since the early 19th century. Furnace size has increased markedly, however, and one large modern furnace can supply a steelmaking plant with up to 10,000 tons of liquid iron per day.

Throughout the 20th century, many new iron-making processes were proposed, but it was not until the 1950s that potential substitutes for the blast furnace emerged. Direct reduction, in which iron ores are reduced at temperatures below the metal’s melting point, had its origin in such experiments as the Wiberg-Soderfors process introduced in Sweden in 1952 and the HyL process introduced in Mexico in 1957. Few of these techniques survived, and those that did were extensively modified. Another alternative iron-making method, smelting reduction, had its forerunners in the electric furnaces used to make liquid iron in Sweden and Norway in the 1920s. The technique grew to include methods based on oxygen steelmaking converters using coal as a source of additional energy, and in the 1980s it became the focus of extensive research and development activity in Europe, Japan, and the United States.

Ores

Iron ores occur in igneous, metamorphic (transformed), or sedimentary rocks in a variety of geologic environments. Most are sedimentary, but many have been changed by weathering, and so their precise origin is difficult to determine. The most widely distributed iron-bearing minerals are oxides, and iron ores consist mainly of hematite (Fe2O3), which is red; magnetite (Fe3O4), which is black; limonite or bog-iron ore (2Fe2O3·3H2O), which is brown; and siderite (FeCO3), which is pale brown. Hematite and magnetite are by far the most common types of ore.

Pure magnetite contains 72.4 percent iron, hematite 69.9 percent, limonite 59.8 percent, and siderite 48.2 percent, but, since these minerals never occur alone, the metal content of real ores is lower. Deposits with less than 30 percent iron are commercially unattractive, and, although some ores contain as much as 66 percent iron, there are many in the 50–60 percent range. An ore’s quality is also influenced by its other constituents, which are collectively known as gangue. Silica (SiO2) and phosphorus-bearing compounds (usually reported as P2O5) are especially important because they affect the composition of the metal and pose extra problems in steelmaking.

China, Brazil, Australia, Russia, and Ukraine are the five biggest producers of iron ore, but significant amounts are also mined in India, the United States, Canada, and Kazakhstan. Together, these nine countries produce 80 percent of the world’s iron ore. Brazil, Australia, Canada, and India export the most, although Sweden, Liberia, Venezuela, Mauritania, and South Africa also sell large amounts. Japan, the European CommunityUnion, and the United States are the major importers.

Mining and concentrating

Most iron ores are extracted by surface mining. Some underground mines do exist, but, wherever possible, surface mining is preferred because it is cheaper.

Lumps and fines

Crushing

As-mined iron ore contains lumps of varying size, the biggest being more than 1 metre (40 inches) across and the smallest about 1 millimetre (0.04 inch). The blast furnace, however, requires lumps between 7 and 25 millimetres, so the ore must be crushed to reduce the maximum particle size. Crushed ore is divided into various fractions by passing it over sieves through which undersized material falls. In this way, lump or rubble ore (7 to 25 millimetres in size) is separated from the fines (less than 7 millimetres). If the lump ore is of the appropriate quality, it can be charged to the blast furnace without any further processing. Fines, however, must first be agglomerated, which means reforming them into lumps of suitable size by a process called sintering.

Sintering

Iron ore sintering consists of heating a layer of fines until partial melting occurs and individual ore particles fuse together. For this purpose, a traveling-grate machine is used, and the burning of fine coke (known as coke breeze) within the ore generates the necessary heat. Before being delivered to the sinter machine, the ore mixture is moistened to cause fine particles to stick to larger ones, and then the appropriate amount of coke is added. Initially, coke on the upper surface of the bed is ignited when the mixture passes under burners in an ignition hood, but thereafter its combustion is maintained by air drawn through the bed of materials by a suction fan, so that by the time the sinter reaches the end of the machine it has completely fused. The grate on which the sinter mix rests consists of a series of cast-iron bars with narrow spaces between them to allow the air through. After cooling, the sinter is broken up and screened to yield blast-furnace feed and an undersize fraction that is recycled. Modern sinter plants are capable of producing up to 25,000 tons per day. Sintering machines are usually measured by hearth area; the biggest machines are 5 metres (16 feet) wide by 120 metres long, and the effective hearth area is 600 square metres (6,500 square feet).

Concentrates

Upgrading

Crushing and screening are straightforward mechanical operations that do not alter an ore’s composition, but some ores need to be upgraded before smelting. Concentration refers to the methods of producing ore fractions richer in iron and lower in silica than the original material. Most processes rely on density differences to separate light minerals from heavier ones, so the ore is crushed and ground to release the ore minerals from the gangue. Magnetic techniques also are used.

The upgraded ore, or concentrate, is in the form of a very fine powder that is physically unsuitable for blast furnace use. It has a much smaller particle size than ore fines and cannot be agglomerated by sintering. Instead, concentrates must be agglomerated by pelletizing, a process that originated in Sweden and Germany about 1912–13 but was adapted in the 1940s to deal with low-grade taconite ores found in the Mesabi Range of Minnesota, U.S.

Pelletizing

First, moistened concentrates are fed to a rotating drum or an inclined disc, the tumbling action of which produces soft, spherical agglomerates. These “green” balls are then dried and hardened by firing in air to a temperature in the range of 1,250° to 1,340° C (2,300° to 2,440° F). Finally, they are slowly cooled. Finished pellets are round and have diameters of 10 to 15 millimetres, making them almost the ideal shape for the blast furnace.

The earliest kind of firing equipment was the shaft furnace. This was followed by the grate-kiln and the traveling grate, which together account for more than 90 percent of world pellet output. In shaft furnaces the charge moves down by gravity and is heated by a counterflow of hot combustion gases, but the grate-kiln system combines a horizontal traveling grate with a rotating kiln and a cooler so that drying, firing, and cooling are performed separately. In the traveling-grate process, pellets are charged at one end and dried, preheated, fired, and cooled as they are carried through successive sections of the equipment before exiting at the other end. Traveling grates and grate-kilns have similar capacities, and up to five million tons of pellets can be made in one unit annually.

Iron making

The primary objective of iron making is to release iron from chemical combination with oxygen, and, since the blast furnace is much the most efficient process, it receives the most attention here. Alternative methods known as direct reduction are used in over a score of countries, but less than 5 percent of iron is made this way. A third group of iron-making techniques classed as smelting-reduction is still in its infancy.

The blast furnace

Basically, the blast furnace is a countercurrent heat and oxygen exchanger in which rising combustion gas loses most of its heat on the way up, leaving the furnace at a temperature of about 200° C (390° F), while descending iron oxides are wholly converted to metallic iron. Process control and productivity improvements all follow from a consideration of these fundamental features. For example, the most important advance of the 20th century has been a switch from the use of randomly sized ore to evenly sized sinter and pellet charges. The main benefit is that the charge descends regularly, without sticking, because the narrowing of the range of particle sizes makes the gas flow more evenly, enhancing contact with the descending solids. (Even so, it is impossible to eliminate size variations completely; at the very least, some breakdown occurs between the sinter plant or coke ovens and the furnace.)

Structure

The furnace itself is a tall, vertical shaft that consists of a steel shell with a refractory lining of firebrick and graphite. Five sections can be identified (see figure). At the bottom is a parallel-sided hearth where liquid metal and slag collect, and this is surmounted by an inverted truncated cone known as the bosh. Air is blown into the furnace through tuyeres, water-cooled nozzles made of copper and mounted at the top of the hearth close to its junction with the bosh. A short vertical section called the bosh parallel, or the barrel, connects the bosh to the truncated upright cone that is the stack. Finally, the fifth and topmost section, through which the charge enters the furnace, is the throat. The lining in the bosh and hearth, where the highest temperatures occur, is usually made of carbon bricks, which are manufactured by pressing and baking a mixture of coke, anthracite, and pitch. Carbon is more resistant to the corrosive action of molten iron and slag than are the aluminosilicate firebricks used for the remainder of the lining. Firebrick quality is measured by the alumina (Al203) content, so that bricks containing 63 percent alumina are used in the bosh parallel, while 45 percent alumina is adequate for the stack.

Until recently, all blast furnaces used the double-bell system to introduce the charge into the stack. This equipment consists of two cones, called bells, each of which can be closed to provide a gas-tight seal. In operation, material is first deposited on the upper, smaller bell, which is then lowered a short distance to allow the charge to fall onto the larger bell. Next, the small bell is closed, and the large bell is lowered to allow the charge to drop into the furnace. In this way, gas is prevented from escaping into the atmosphere. Because it is difficult to distribute the burden evenly over the furnace cross section with this system, and because the abrasive action of the charge causes the bells to wear so that gas leakage eventually occurs, more and more furnaces are equipped with a bell-less top, in which the rate of material flow from each hopper is controlled by an adjustable gate and delivery to the stack is through a rotating chute whose angle of inclination can be altered. This arrangement gives good control of burden distribution, since successive portions of the charge can be placed in the furnace as rings of differing diameter. The charging pattern that gives the best furnace performance can then be found easily.

The general principles upon which blast-furnace design is based are as follows. Cold charge (mainly ore and coke), entering at the top of the stack, increases in temperature as it descends, so that it expands. For this reason the stack diameter must increase to let the charge move down freely, and typically the stack wall is displaced outward at an angle of 6° to 7° to the vertical. Eventually, melting of iron and slag takes place, and the voids between the solids are filled with liquid so that there is an apparent decrease in volume. This requires a smaller diameter, and the bosh wall therefore slopes inward and makes an angle to the vertical in the range of 6° to 9°. Over the years, the internal lines of the furnace that give it its characteristic shape have undergone a series of evolutionary changes, but the major alteration has been an increase in girth so that the ratio of height to bosh parallel has been progressively reduced as furnaces have become bigger.

For many years, the accepted method of building a furnace was to use the steel shell to give the structure rigidity and to support the stack with steel columns at regular intervals around the furnace. With very large furnaces, however, the mass is too great, so that a different construction must be used in which four large columns are joined to a box girder surrounding the furnace at a level near the top of the stack. The steel shell still takes most of the mass of the stack, but the furnace top is supported independently.

Operation

Solid charge is raised to the top of the furnace either in hydraulically operated skips or by the use of conveyor belts. Air blown into the furnace through the tuyeres is preheated to a temperature between 900° and 1,350° C (1,650° and 2,450° F) in hot-blast stoves, and in some cases it is enriched with up to 25 percent oxygen. The main product, molten pig iron (also called hot metal or blast-furnace iron), is tapped from the bottom of the furnace at regular intervals. Productivity is measured by dividing the output by the internal working volume of the furnace; 2 to 2.5 tons per cubic metre (125 to 150 pounds per cubic foot) can be obtained every 24 hours from furnaces with working volumes of 4,000 cubic metres (140,000 cubic feet).

Two by-products, slag and gas, are also formed. Slag leaves the furnace by the same taphole as the iron (upon which it floats), and its composition generally lies in the range of 30–40 percent silica (SiO2), 5–15 percent alumina (Al2O3), 35–45 percent lime (CaO), and 5–15 percent magnesia (MgO). The gas exiting at the top of the furnace is composed mainly of carbon monoxide (CO), carbon dioxide (CO2), and nitrogen (N2); a typical composition would be 23 percent CO, 22 percent CO2, 3 percent water, and 49 percent N2. Its net combustion energy is roughly one-tenth that of methane. After the dust has been removed, this gas, together with some coke-oven gas, is burned in hot-blast stoves to heat the air blown in through the tuyeres. Hot-blast stoves are in effect temporary heat-storage devices consisting of a combustion chamber and a checkerwork of firebricks that absorb heat during the combustion period. When the stove is hot enough, combustion is stopped and cold air is blown through in the reverse direction, so that the checkerwork surrenders its heat to the air, which then travels to the furnace and enters via the tuyeres. Each furnace has three or four stoves to ensure a continuous supply of hot blast.

Chemistry

The internal workings of a blast furnace used to be something of a mystery, but iron-making chemistry is now well established. Coke burns in oxygen present in the air blast in a combustion reaction taking place near the bottom of the furnace immediately in front of the tuyeres:

The heat generated by the reaction is carried upward by the rising gases and transferred to the descending charge. The CO in the gas then reacts with iron oxide in the stack, producing metallic iron and CO2:

Not all the oxygen originally present in the ore is removed like this; some remaining oxide reacts directly with carbon at the higher temperatures encountered in the bosh:

Softening and melting of the ore takes place here, droplets of metal and slag forming and trickling down through a layer of coke to collect on the hearth.

The conditions that cause the chemical reduction of iron oxides to occur also affect other oxides. All the phosphorus pentoxide (P2O5) and some of the silica and manganous oxide (MnO) are reduced, while phosphorus, silicon, and manganese all dissolve in the hot metal together with some carbon from the coke.

Direct reduction (DR)

This is any process in which iron is extracted from ore at a temperature below the melting points of the materials involved. Gangue remains in the spongelike product, known as direct-reduced iron, or DRI, and must be removed in a subsequent steelmaking process. Only high-grade ores and pellets made from superconcentrates (66 percent iron) are therefore really suitable for DR iron making.

Direct reduction is used mostly in special circumstances, often linked to cheap supplies of natural gas. Several processes are based on the use of a slightly inclined rotating kiln to which ore, coal, and recycled material are charged at the upper end, with heat supplied by an oil or gas burner. Results are modest, however, compared to gas-based processes, many of which are conducted in shaft furnaces. In the most successful of these, known as the Midrex (after its developer, a division of the Midland-Ross Corporation), a gas reformer converts methane (CH4) to a mixture of carbon monoxide and hydrogen (H2) and feeds these gases to the top half of a small shaft furnace. There descending pellets are chemically reduced at a temperature of 850° C (1,550° F). The metallized charge is cooled in the bottom half of the shaft before being discharged.

Smelting reduction

The scarcity of coking coals for blast-furnace use and the high cost of coke ovens are two reasons for the emergence of this other alternative iron-making process. Smelting reduction employs two units: in the first, iron ore is heated and reduced by gases exiting from the second unit, which is a smelter-gasifier supplied with coal and oxygen. The partially reduced ore is then smelted in the second unit, and liquid iron is produced. Smelting-reduction technology enables a wide range of coals to be used for iron making.

The metal

Hot metal (blast-furnace iron)

Most blast furnaces are linked to a basic oxygen steel plant, for which the hot metal typically contains 4 to 4.5 percent carbon, 0.6 to 0.8 percent silicon, 0.03 percent sulfur, 0.7 to 0.8 percent manganese, and 0.15 percent phosphorus. Tapping temperatures are in the range 1,400° to 1,500° C (2,550° to 2,700° F); to save energy, the hot metal is transferred directly to the steel plant with a temperature loss of about 100° C (200° F).

The major determinants of the composition of basic iron are the hearth temperature and the choice of iron ores. For instance, carbon content is fixed both by the temperature and by the amounts of other elements present in the iron. Sulfur and silicon are both temperature-dependent and generally vary in opposite directions, a high temperature producing low sulfur and high silicon levels. Furnace size also influences silicon, so that large furnaces yield low-silicon iron. Phosphorus, on the other hand, is determined entirely by the amount present in the original charge. Like silica, manganous oxide is partially reduced by carbon, and its final concentration depends on the hearth temperature and slag composition.

Cast iron

Iron production is relatively unsophisticated. It mostly involves remelting charges consisting of pig iron, steel scrap, foundry scrap, and ferroalloys to give the appropriate composition. The cupola, which resembles a small blast furnace, is the most common melting unit. Cold pig iron and scrap are charged from the top onto a bed of hot coke through which air is blown. Alternatively, a metallic charge is melted in a coreless induction furnace or in a small electric-arc furnace.

There are two basic types of cast iron—namely, white and gray.

White iron

White cast irons are usually made by limiting the silicon content to a maximum of 1.3 percent, so that no graphite is present and all of the carbon exists as cementite (Fe3C). The name white refers to the bright appearance of the fracture surfaces when a piece of the iron is broken in two. White irons are too hard to be machined and must be ground to shape. Brittleness limits their range of applications, but they are sometimes used when wear resistance is required, as in brake linings.

The main use for white irons is as the starting material for malleable cast irons, in which the cementite formed during casting is decomposed by heat treatment. Such irons contain about 0.6 to 1.3 percent silicon, which is enough to promote cementite decomposition during the heat treatment but not enough to produce graphite flakes during casting. Whiteheart malleable iron is made by using an oxidizing atmosphere to remove carbon from the surface of white iron castings heated to a temperature of 900° C (1,650° F). Blackheart malleable iron, on the other hand, is made by annealing white iron in a neutral atmosphere, again at a temperature of 900° C. In this process, cementite is decomposed to form rosette-shaped graphite nodules, which are less embrittling than flakes. Blackheart iron is an important material that is widely used in agricultural and engineering machinery. Even better mechanical properties can be obtained by the addition of small amounts of magnesium or cerium to molten iron, since these elements have the effect of transforming the graphite into spherical nodules. These SG (spheroidal graphite) irons, which are also called ductile irons, are strong and malleable; they are also easy to cast and are sometimes preferred to steel castings and forgings.

Gray iron

Gray cast irons generally contain more than 2 percent silicon, and carbon exists as flakes of graphite embedded in a combination of ferrite and pearlite. The name arises because graphite imparts a dull gray appearance to fracture surfaces. Phosphorus is present in most cast irons, lowering the freezing point and lengthening the solidification period so that gray irons can be cast into intricate shapes. Unfortunately, graphite formation is enhanced by slow solidification, and the crack-inducing effect of graphite flakes reduces the metal’s strength and malleability. Gray cast irons are therefore unsuitable when shock resistance is required, but they are ideal for such purposes as engine cylinder blocks, domestic stoves, and manhole covers. They are easy to machine because the graphite causes the metal to break off in small chips, and they also have a high damping capacity (i.e., they are able to absorb vibration). As a result, gray cast irons are used as frames for rotating machinery such as lathes.

High-alloy iron

The properties of both white and gray cast irons can be enhanced by the inclusion of alloying elements such as nickel (Ni), chromium (Cr), and molybdenum (Mo). For example, Ni-Hard, a white iron containing 4 to 5 percent nickel and up to 1.5 percent chromium, is used to make metalworking rolls. Irons in the Ni-Resist range, which contain 14 to 25 percent nickel, are nonmagnetic and have good heat and corrosion resistance.

Casting methods

Iron castings can be made in many ways, but sand-casting is the most common. First, a pattern of the required shape (slightly enlarged to allow for shrinkage) is made in wood, metal, or plastic. It is then placed in a two-piece molding box and firmly packed in sand that is held together by a bonding agent. After the sand has hardened, the molding box is split open to allow the pattern to be removed and used again, and then the box is reassembled and molten metal poured into the cavity to create the casting.

A greensand casting is made in a sand mold bonded with clay, the name referring not to the colour of the sand but to the fact that the mold is uncured. Dry-sand molds are similar, except that the sand is baked before receiving any metal. Alternatively, hardening can be effected by mixing sodium silicate into the sand to create chemical bonds that make baking unnecessary. For heavy castings, molds made of coarse loam sand backed up with brick and faced with highly refractory material are used.

Sand-casting produces rough surfaces, and a much better finish can be achieved by shell molding. This process involves bringing a mixture of sand and a thermosetting resin into contact with a heated metal pattern to form an envelope or shell of hardened sand. Two half-shells are then assembled to make a mold. Wax patterns also can be used to make one-piece shell molds, the wax being removed by melting before the resin is cured in an oven.

For some high-precision applications, iron is cast into permanent molds made of either cast iron or graphite. It is important, however, to ensure that the molds are warmed before use and that their internal surfaces are given a coating to release the casting after solidification.

Most castings are static in that they rely on gravity to cause the liquid metal to fill the mold. Centrifugal casting, however, uses a rotating mold to produce hollow cylindrical castings, such as cast-iron drainpipes.

Wrought iron

Although it is no longer manufactured, the wrought iron that survives contains less than 0.035 percent carbon. It therefore consists essentially of ferrite, but its strength and malleability are reduced by entrained puddling slag, which is elongated into stringers by rolling. As a result, breaking a bar of wrought iron reveals a fibrous fracture not unlike that of wood. The other elements present are silicon (0.075 to 0.15 percent), sulfur (0.01 to 0.2 percent), phosphorus (0.1 to 0.25 percent), and manganese (0.05 to 0.1 percent). This relative purity is the reason why wrought iron has a reputation for good corrosion resistance.

Iron powder

Iron powders produced by crushing and grinding or by atomizing a stream of molten metal are made into small components by pressing or rolling them into compacts, which are then sintered. The density of the compacts depends on the pressure used, but porous compacts suitable for self-lubricating bearings or filters can be given accurate dimensions by using this technique.

Chemical compounds

Apart from being a source of iron, hematite is used for its reddish colour in cosmetics and as a pigment in paints and roof tiles. Also, when cobalt and nickel oxides are added to hematite, a group of ceramic materials closely related to magnetite, known as ferrites, are formed. These are ferromagnetic (i.e., highly magnetic) and are widely used in computers and in electronic transmission and receiving equipment.

Iron is a constituent of human blood, and various iron compounds have medical uses. Ferric ammonium citrate is an appetite stimulator, and ferrous gluconate, ferrous sulfate, and ferric pyrophosphate are among compounds used to treat anemia. Ferric salts act as coagulants and are applied to wounds to promote healing.

Iron compounds are also widely used in agriculture. For example, ferrous sulfate is applied as a spray to acid-loving plants, and other compounds are used as fungicides.